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Fire Ecology Volume 7, Issue 1, 2011
doi: 10.4996/fireecology.0701074
Forum Article
BURNING AT THE EDGE: INTEGRATING BIOPHYSICAL AND ECO-CULTURAL
FIRE PROCESSES IN CANADA’S PARKS AND PROTECTED AREAS
Clifford A. White1*, Daniel D.B. Perrakis2, Victor G. Kafka3, and Timothy Ennis4
Parks Canada Agency,
P.O. Box 900, Banff National Park, Banff, Alberta, Canada T1L 1K2
1
British Columbia Ministry of Natural Resource Operations, Wildfire Management Branch,
P.O. Box 9502 Station Provincial Government Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8W 9C1
2
Parks Canada Agency, Ecosystem Conservation Service,
3 passage du Chien d’Or, C.P. 6060, Haute-Ville, Québec, Province of Québec, Canada G1R 4V7
3
Nature Conservancy of Canada,
200-825 Broughton Street, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8W 1E5
4
*Corresponding author: Tel.: 001-403-760-0203; e-mail: [email protected]
Abstract
Currently, high intensity, large-area lightning fires that burn during droughts dominate
Canada’s fire regimes. However, studies from several disciplines clearly show that humans historically ignited burns within this matrix of large fires. Two approaches for fire
research and management have arisen from this pattern: a “large-fire biophysical paradigm” related to lightning-ignited fires, and an “eco-cultural paradigm” related to humancaused burning. Working at the edge between biophysically driven fires and eco-cultural
burns, and their associated management and research paradigms, presents unique challenges to land managers. We proceed by describing fire frequency trends across Canada,
and how an interaction between changing climatic and cultural factors may provide better
causal explanations for observed patterns than either group of factors alone. We then describe four case histories of fire restoration into Canadian landscapes moving through
evolution, or deliberate intent, towards increasing emphasis on an eco-cultural paradigm.
We show that use of cultural burns maintains this facet of the long-term regime while providing greater capacity for larger, higher intensity fires to occur with fewer negative ecological and socio-economic implications. Key lessons learned by practitioners restoring
fire to landscapes include: 1) fire is only one process in ecosystems that also include other
complex interactions, and thus restoration of fire alone could have unintended consequences in some ecosystems; 2) recognizing long-term human roles of not only fire managers, but also hunters and gatherers is critical in restoration programs; and 3) this diversity of past, present, and future ecological and cultural interactions with fire can link managers to a broad constituency of stakeholders. Bringing this variety of people and interests
into the decision-making processes is a necessary pre-requisite to successful fire management at the edge.
Fire Ecology Volume 7, Issue 1, 2011
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Keywords: anthropogenic fire, boreal forests, Canada, fire management, fire regimes, lightning fire
Citation: White, C.A., D.D.B. Perrakis, V.G. Kafka, and T. Ennis. 2011. Burning at the edge:
integrating biophysical and eco-cultural fire processes in Canada’s parks and protected areas.
Fire Ecology 7(1): 74-106. doi: 10.4996/fireecology.0701074
INTRODUCTION
Cultural edges may be more difficult for us to understand than ecological edges. (Turner et al. 2003)
Wildland fire is a dominant ecological process across Canada. Fire plays a critical role
in maintaining characteristic vegetation com-
munities within Canadian ecozones (Figure 1),
including the grasslands of the Prairies, subalpine and dry interior forests of the Montane
Cordillera, mixed conifer and deciduous forests of the Boreal Plains and Shield, and the
eastern hardwood and pine forests of the
Mixedwood Plains in southeastern Canada and
the Atlantic Maritime ecozones (Stocks et al.
2003, Pyne 2007). Although fire suppression
Figure 1. Canadian ecozones (Canadian Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995) and distribution
of fires (>200 ha, 1959 to 1997) from the Canadian Large Fire Database (Stocks et al. 2003). Also shown
are locations for La Mauricie National Park (A), Prince Albert National Park (B), Banff National Park (C),
and Cowichan Garry Oak Preserve and Gulf Islands National Park Reserve (D).
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is the primary land management objective in
most of Canada, an average of over 2 million
hectares burned annually from 1959 through
1997, with up to 7 million hectares burning in
major fire years. During this period, burn area
was dominated by large fires (>200 ha). Although these burns represented only 3 % of the
total number of fires, they burned 97 % of the
area (Stocks et al. 2003).
The current regime of large, high-intensity
fire is thus understandably the focus of Canadian forest fire researchers and managers. The
prevailing “large fire, biophysical paradigm”
centers attention on lightning strikes that currently ignite the majority of these burns (e.g.,
Nash and Johnson 1996), the weather, fuel and
topographic factors that favor fire growth
(e. g., Stocks et al. 2004), and rapid initial attack through technology (lightning detection,
use of aircraft, etc.) that can be used to suppress these fires while they are still small (e.g.,
Martell and Sun 2008). If suppression fails,
intensive forest management (logging, thinning) near communities, combined with engineered-building solutions (concrete, fire-proof
roofs, etc.), are used to minimize risks to human health and infrastructure from high-intensity infernos (Johnson and Miyanishi 2001,
Canadian Wildland Fire Strategy Task Group
2005). From our experience, contemporary researchers and managers working on the basis
of the biophysical paradigm tend to conceptualize that lightning ignitions have long burned
the majority of the area in many Canadian
ecozones (for argument, say >75 %), and for
various reasons do not believe that human ignitions could have substantially contributed to
historic fire regimes in most areas (e.g., Johnson et al. 1998, Bergeron et al. 2004a).
However important the biophysical role of
fire is today, anthropological and historical research throughout Canada shows that, in the
past, human attention focused more on an ecological and cultural importance of fire (Pyne
2007). For more than ten millennia, First Nations of indigenous peoples have occupied al-
most all areas of Canada, with population density highest in more southern areas (McMillan
1995). Studies clearly show that humans set
low intensity fires that burned over the long
term within the larger matrix of fires (Lewis
and Ferguson 1988, Turner 1999). Historically, at least in some areas, human use, not suppression, of fire was more significant. Fire
was an easily available tool that could be routinely used for purposes ranging from altering
wildlife habitat, to improving berry crops, to
warfare (Boyd 1999, Stewart 2002). People
living on the land understood fire’s role intimately, and because it was their most powerful
tool to change landscapes, integrated this understanding into daily decisions for survival.
This “eco-cultural paradigm” for fire management may have prevailed because of human’s
interaction with large, lightning or humancaused burns. Consider that pre-emptive dormant season burning could reduce the risk of
more intense fires later unfavorably altering
habitats important to people (Lewis 1980,
Lewis and Ferguson 1988). It is important to
note, however, that data are lacking for many
areas in Canada, and there is still uncertainty
and controversy about the magnitude of the
eco-cultural use of fire by First Nations, Metis,
and early white settlers. Thus, current researchers or managers working with fire based
upon an eco-cultural paradigm usually conceptualize that ignitions by humans historically
burned only a minor portion of most ecosystems (say <25 % of the area burned during past
temporal periods), and that this burning was in
dormant seasons with relatively low intensity
(e.g., Lewis and Ferguson 1988, Johnson-Gottesfeld 1994, Turner 1999). In this respect,
both the biophysical and eco-cultural perspectives are currently complementary. However,
as we will discuss, there is increasing realization that burning by humans occurred also during dryer conditions, and burned much larger
areas (Pyne 2007).
In our opinion, three important trends are
increasing the relative importance of the eco-
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cultural versus biophysical fire management
paradigms in Canada. First, the area within
the country dedicated to parks and the participation of First Nations in land management is
consistently increasing (Parks Canada Agency
2000). Historically, the solution to unwanted
fires was to remove First Nations, transform
the landscape with roads, logging, plowing,
and settlements, and then implement aggressive fire suppression (Binnema and Niemi
2006, Pyne 2007). The trend to establish more
parks, often with First Nations’ management
or co-management, has made this approach to
fire increasingly unworkable. A second trend,
as studies reviewed later in this paper demonstrate, is a general decline in Canadian burn
area in the southern half of the country (Stocks
et al. 2003). Thirdly, as a result of the above
trends, restoration of long-term fire regimes is
becoming a critical part of land management,
particularly in parks and protected areas. For
example, as of the year 2000, Canada’s National Parks Act requires that managers give
priority to restoring or maintaining “ecological
integrity,” which is defined as “a condition that
is determined to be characteristic of its natural
region and likely to persist, including biotic
and abiotic communities, rates of change, and
supporting processes.” This definition purposely does not differentiate between characteristic conditions that were culturally versus
biophysically driven (Parks Canada Agency
2000).
Working at the edge, between biophysically driven fires and eco-cultural burns and their
associated management and research paradigms, presents unique challenges to land
managers. In this paper, we argue that restoring fire to Canada’s parks and protected areas
might be more successful by reducing focus on
the large biophysically driven fires that currently burn most of the area, and increasing
emphasis on the long-term role of eco-cultural
fire within the matrix of larger fires. We proceed by giving a brief overview of Canadian
fire regimes, then describe spatial and tempo-
ral fire frequency trends across the country.
We critique explanations for declining burn
area that arise from changing biophysical or
cultural groups of factors alone, and then provide a preliminary conceptual model of how
an interaction between these factors may provide a better causal mechanism. We then describe four case histories of fire restoration
into Canadian landscapes moving through evolution, or deliberate intent, towards increased
consideration of long-term, eco-cultural factors. We summarize lessons learned from
these case histories, and conclude with
thoughts on how park managers can eventually
integrate fire’s various biophysical and ecocultural dimensions.
CANADIAN FIRE REGIMES
THEN AND NOW
Patterns of weather, fuels, topography, and
ignition (timing and location) are all key factors that, over time, determine fire regime
characteristics such as frequency, seasonality,
and severity (Pyne et al. 1996). In many landscapes, fire regime characteristics can also be
influenced by cultural values that dictate human practices such as land use, suppression
and use of fire, and regional and national fire
policies. Chapin et al. (2003) developed a
conceptual model of these interactions, which
we have modified (Figure 2).
Spatial Variation of Fire Weather
and Behavior
No country-wide fire regime map is available for Canada. Thus, for a coarse scale analysis of Canadian fire regimes, we focus on the
cumulative effect of weather variables (wind,
rainfall, and temperature patterns), as integrated through the Canadian Forest Fire Weather
Index (FWI), to predict fire occurrence and behavior (Stocks et al. 1989). The simplest model for interpreting the broad geography of Canadian fire assumes, at least in the past, that
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Figure 2. A conceptual model of the interaction between biophysical and cultural factors influencing
fire regimes (modified from Chapin et al. 2003).
ignition and fuels were not limiting (Krawchuck et al. 2009). Lightning and human
caused fires were relatively common, and the
resulting burn area was mostly related to
weather patterns (Bergeron et al. 2004a, Girardin 2007, Lepofsky and Lertzman 2008). In a
later section, we will further discuss the assumption of ignition limitation.
We use two country-wide spatial models
(Simard 1973, Canadian Forest Service 2010)
to show spatial and temporal patterns of the
FWI. There is a similar pattern visible in both
spatial models (Figures 3 and 4). The mean
FWI decreases from south to north, with nodes
of weather favorable to fire activity in the
southern Montane Cordillera, the southern
Prairies, the Mixedwood Plains in the Great
Lakes area of south-central Canada, and the
south-central Atlantic Maritime ecozones. The
peak of burning conditions varies by month
across the country (Figure 4). The Prairies and
southern Boreal Plains have highest fire weath-
Figure 3. Fire weather zones of Canada (from Simard 1973) calculated from mean fire weather index values for the months June, July, and August for 364 weather stations for the period 1957 to 1966.
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Figure 4. Mean Fire Weather Index values for Canada calculated for the months April through September
from several hundred weather stations for the period 1971 to 2001 (Canadian Forest Service 2010). Fire
weather was not monitored for the majority of the Prairie ecozone and for northern Canada due to low fire
occurrence.
er indices in April and May; the Boreal, Taiga,
and Mixedwood Plains in June and July; and
the Montane Cordillera and Pacific Maritime
ecozones during August. By September, most
of the country is cooling, but areas of higher
fire weather index values still occur in the
southern Montane Cordillera, the southwestern
Prairies, and the Mixedwood Plains in eastern
Canada. Simard’s (1973) analysis also provides distributions of the FWI by zone (Table
1). His analysis clearly shows that for the majority of areas, most of the days when burning
will occur will have low to moderate intensity
fire. His analysis is based on June-to-August
data only, when conditions are driest. Inclusion of data from April, May, and October
(Figure 4) would further increase the number
of days of low to moderate fire intensity potential, particularly in southern areas.
Long-Term Temporal Variation of Fire
Frequency by Fire Weather Zones
We extended reviews of fire history studies
for Canada’s boreal forest ecozones (Bergeron
et al. 2004a, Zhang and Chen 2007) to include
other areas of Canada, and categorized fire history studies by the Simard (1973) FWI zones
(Table 2). In most cases, these studies used
dendrochronology to determine either the
time-since-fire (in high-severity regimes) or
fire intervals (in low-severity regimes). From
this information, either the fire cycle (years required to burn an area equivalent to the study
area), or the mean fire interval (years) can be
estimated. In landscapes with periodic random
fire occurrence that is consistent over time and
space, these estimates of fire frequency will be
equivalent (Johnson and Van Wagner 1985,
Johnson and Gutsell 1994). In cool and moist
areas, researchers used soil charcoal evidence
(e.g., Hallett et al. 2003) to evaluate fire fre-
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Table 1. Percent of days by potential fire behavior for fire weather index (FWI) zones of Canada (from
Simard 1973).
Zone
(FWI map Mean
color code) FWI
Percent days by fire behavior and map fire zone
No
Light Moderate Hot
Crown
fire Smoldering surface surface surface Torching fire Conflagration
1- Minimal
(blue green)
0-2
65
34
1
2- Very low
(dark green)
2-4
40
50
7
3
3- Low
(light green)
4-6
31
44
15
5
4
1
4- Moderate
(yellow)
6-10
20
40
20
10
7
2
1
5- High
(orange)
10-14
15
40
10
15
10
7
2
1
6- Very high 14-20
(light red)
5
30
10
20
15
15
3
2
25
7
10
13
20
15
10
7- Extreme
(red)
20+
quency. For studies listed in Table 2 that describe fire cycles or intervals over multiple
time periods, the earliest period likely provides
the best estimate of long-term conditions before alterations caused by contemporary cultural and land use change (e.g., McMillan
1995). As one would expect, the past fire frequency broadly follows the FWI zones. Historically long fire cycles (>400 yr), often estimated from stand age or soil charcoal analysis,
occurred in cooler and wetter areas such as
along Canada’s coastline. Shorter fire intervals (<50 yr) occurred in the areas with the
highest FWI values, such as the southwestern
Montane Cordillera, and the Prairies.
Multiple time-period evaluations have
nearly always found shorter fire cycles or fire
intervals in the past, particularly in the southern parts of the country. Surprisingly, the
greatest decreases in fire activity occurred in
the high to extreme fire weather zones (Figure
3), for example on the eastern slope of the
Rocky Mountains within the Montane Cordillera (Van Wagner et al. 2006). However, a
trend of decreasing area burned in recent de-
cades has also occurred in the very low to
moderate fire weather zones, such as in the
Boreal Shield East ecozone in central Quebec
and Ontario (Bergeron et al. 2001). Many
studies show that this change in fire regime
can be detected in two sequential periods: an
early decline that occurred around 1750 to
1850, depending on the location; and a second,
more dramatic, decrease in fire activity in the
early to mid 1900s (e.g., Masters 1990,
Bergeron et al. 2001, Van Wagner et al. 2006).
In contrast, several fire history studies for the
Boreal Plains West, and northern Boreal Shield
West ecozones reported little change in fire
frequency over time, regardless of fire weather
zone (e.g., Johnson 1979, Bothwell et al.
2004).
This spatio-temporal pattern is also well
demonstrated by an analysis of Canada’s large
fire database (Stocks et al. 2003; Figure 5).
This map shows that for the period 1959 to
1997, very little area burned in four ecozones
where, historically, it had had the highest frequency (Table 2): the southern Montane Cordillera, the Prairies, the Mixedwood Plains in
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Table 2. Selected fire history studies for areas within fire weather index (FWI) zones of Canada (see Figure
3). Where detailed fire history studies are unavailable, research from areas in adjacent United States was
used. If researchers assigned climate change as a primary factor causal to a fire frequency change at the end
of a period, this is indicated by an asterisk.
Estimated mean fire interval or fire cycleb in years
(time period, year AD)
Ecozonea-vegetation
FWI zone
cover
Minimal
Very low
Low
Moderate
High
Very high
Extreme
Reference
Early period
Middle period
Late period
Potential causal
covariates analyzedc
PM-conifer
Lertzman et al. 2002 Gavin et al. 2003 >1000 (<2000)
PM-conifer
Daniels and Gray 2006
MC-conifer
Hawkes 1997, Kopra and Feller 2007 >500 (<1940)
TE, RC
PM-conifer
Hallett et al. 2003
174-272 (800-2000)
RC, C
TP-boreal conifer
Johnson 1979
102 (<1975)
BSE-conifer
Bergeron et al. 2001
69* (<1850)
BSE-conifer
Bouchard et al. 2008
>500 (1800-2000)
TP-boreal conifer
Johnson 1979
70 (<1975)
BSE-conifer
Bergeron et al. 2001
BSE-conifer
Le Goff et al. 2007
BSE-conifer
TE, FT, C
>500
>fire
LU
RC
123* (1850-1920) 273 (1920-1999)
C, RC
RC
RC
86* (1850-1920)
195 (1920-1999)
C, RC
99* (1720-1940)
282 (1940-1998)
C, RC
Lauzon et al. 2007
89* (1600-1850)
176 (1850-2003)
IW, IT
BSE-conifer
Bouchard et al. 2008
250 (1800-2000)
MC-conifer
Van Wagner 1978
50 (1680-1915)
TP-boreal conifer
Johnson 1979
50 (<1975)
MC-conifer
Johnson et al. 1990
80* (1520-1760)
BSE-conifer
Bergeron et al. 2001
131* (<1850)
234* (1850-1920) 521 (1920-1999)
C, RC
BSE-conifer
Bergeron et al. 2001
83* (<1850)
146* (1850-1920) 325 (1920-1999)
�����������
C, RC
BSE-mixedwood
Lefort 2003, Bergeron et al. 2004b
83* (<1850)
111* (1850-1920) 326 (1920-1990)
C, FT, IW, RC, IT, FT,
LU, LF
BC-conifer
Bothwell et al. 2004
28 (1813-1974)
TP-boreal conifer
Bothwell et al. 2004
27 (1765-1977)
BSW-mixedwood
Heinselman 1973, Van Wagner 1978
47 (1542-1911)
AM-mixedwood
Wein and Moore 1977
MC-conifer
Tande 1979
74 (1675-1913)
TP-boreal conifer
Johnson 1979
37 (<1975)
BP –conifer
Larsen 1997
25-49 (1750-1859)
BP –conifer
Weir et al. 2000
15* (<1890)
MP-mixedwood
BP-mixedwood
RC
>80 (1915-1960)
LU
RC
110 (1760-1988)
TE, LU
RC
RC
1000 (1911-1970)
IW, FT, IT, S, FS, LU
>650 (1920-1975)
FT, IT, S, RC
Few fires (1913-1975)
TE, FT
RC
59-89 (1860-1989
FT
75* (1890-1945)
1745 (1945-1996)
RC, LU
Dey and Guyette 2000, Cwyner 1977 29 (1643-1814)
6 (1814-1954)
Few fires
RC, IT, TK, LU
Tardif 2004
278 (1900-1960)
>15 000 (1960-2002)
C, LU, FS
Few fires (1913-1975)
TE, FT
35 (1700-1880)
MC-conifer grassland Tande 1979
21* (1675-1913)
MC-conifer
Masters 1990
60* (1508-1778)
MC-conifer
Johnson and Larsen 1991
50* (1600-1730)
90 (1730-1990)
TE
BP –mixedwood
Weir et al. 2000
25* (1795- 1945)
645 (1945-1996)
FT, LU, IT
99 (1332-1840)
352 (1841-1999)
RC, C, LF
6855 (1941-1999)
RC, C, IW, TE, IT, FS,
LU, TK, LF
MC-conifer westslope Van Wagner et al. 2006
130* (1778-1928) >2700 (1928-1988)
TE
MC-conifer eastslope
Van Wagner et al. 2006, and others
72 (1285-1760)
MC-conifer grass
Heyerdahl et al. 2006
37 (1700-1860)
Few fires (1860-2005)
LU, C, TE
MC-conifer
Gray et al. 2004
19 (1694-1883)
>115 (1884-1998)
TE
MC-conifer grass
Heyerdahl et al. 2005
16 (1750-1950)
Few fires (1950-2004)
TE, S
MC- conifer grass
Daniels et al. 2009
10-26 (1509-1944)
Few fires (1944-2006)
C, LU
P-conifer grass
Fisher et al. 1987
27 (1600-1770)
42 (1900-1987)
LU, FS
P-conifer grass
Brown and Seig 1999
10-12 (1564-1912)
Few fires (1912-1996)
S, LU, RC
174 (1760-1940)
14 (1770-1900)
See Figure 1.
b
As defined by Johnson and Van Wagner (1985), the mean fire interval is the average time between known dates of
fires across a point, whereas the fire cycle is the time required to burn an area equal to the study area.
c
Covariates are coded as proxy climate data, usually derived from tree-ring studies (C), fire suppression (FS), fuel or
vegetation type (FT), ignition type (IT), instrumental weather data (IW), lightning frequency (LF), land-use changes
(LU), regional comparisons between areas (RC), local topography effects (TE), seasonality (S), and First Nations’
occupation patterns and traditional knowledge (TK).
a
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Figure 5. Fire cycles for ecoregions mapped within ecozones (Canadian Ecological Stratification Working
Group 1995) for the period 1959 to 1997, from the Canadian Large Fire Database (modified from Stocks
et al. 2003).
south-central Canada, and the Atlantic Maritime. However, similar to the dendrochronology studies, the large fire database records large
burn areas still occurring in a broad belt across
the centre of the country in the western Boreal
and Taiga ecozones, reaching across western
Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta,
and the southern Northwest Territories.
Interestingly, very few of the studies summarized in Table 2 reported an increase in burn
area associated with what is commonly called
settlement periods—the time of transition from
land occupation by First Nations to more recent land uses. The dates for this period vary
by area as European influence moved west and
north across the country over the last few centuries (McMillan 1995). The failure to detect
a period of high fire frequency associated with
this migration is remarkable because of the
many reports of anthropogenic burning during
the early years of mining, agriculture, railroad
operation, and forestry is certainly well documented (e.g., Wein and Moore 1977, White
1985, Weir and Johnson 1998, Bergeron et al.
2004b, Lauzon et al. 2007, Pyne 2007). In
Canada, this prolific level of burning by humans eventually stimulated a major government response including establishment of the
Dominion and provincial forest reserves and
management organizations, as well as technological developments in pumps, engine spark
arrestors, and eventually aircraft (Pyne 2007).
Although this amount of burn area may have
captured the interest of the governments of the
day, it is likely not detected in fire history studies because it was relatively similar or, in some
cases, actually less than the burn area in previous times (Table 2).
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DRIVERS OF FIRE FREQUENCY
CHANGE
Understanding the magnitude and causes
of changes in fire frequency is critical for researchers and land managers in evaluating actions that could be taken if fire frequency is to
be modified. Table 2 lists potential causal factors that researchers have evaluated for interpreting spatial or temporal variations in fire
frequency. Although there is little debate that
land-use changes and fire suppression have
been primary factors causing burn area decline
in several southern ecozones (e.g., Prairies,
Mixedwood Plains, and Atlantic Maritime;
Figure 1), for the large area of Canada that has
forest cover and is lightly human-occupied,
this question is stimulating research and debate
(e.g., Johnson et al. 1998, Ter-Mikaelian et al.
2009, Girardin et al. 2009). We first critique
two general explanations for reduced burn area
that are often evaluated independently (Table
2): climatic change (based upon a biophysical
paradigm), and changing human land use patterns (an eco-cultural paradigm). We then provide an explanation based upon an interaction
effect between biophysical and eco-cultural
factors.
Biophysical versus Eco-Cultural Factors:
a Difficult Dichotomy
Long-term, directional climate change is
the primary explanation currently advanced
under a biophysical paradigm for sustained,
reduced fire activity observed for many areas
of Canada, particularly for changes occurring
prior to the year 1900, and for boreal forest
ecozones (Table 2). Large burn areas in Canada usually occur during droughts resulting
from stable, high pressure systems in the upper
atmosphere that block the west to east movements across the country of rainfall-bearing
storms (Skinner et al. 2002). Numerous studies (reviewed by Macias Fauria and Johnson
2008) describe drought conditions resulting
from tele-connections between large-area synoptic patterns. These range from relatively
short-term phenomena (several months) of the
Arctic Oscillation, to the longer El Niño Southern Oscillation (2 yr to 4 yr periodicity), to the
Pacific Decadal Oscillation (20 yr to 40 yr).
These patterns in turn fluctuate within the century-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles that influence climatic anomalies such as the Medieval Warming Period or Little Ice Age (Bond
et al. 1997). All of these climatic cycles may,
in turn, be altered by directional anthropogenic
global warming with potentially significant
implications for Canadian fire frequency (e.g.,
Flannigan and Van Wagner 1991; Flannigan et
al. 1998, 2005).
Despite the continued emphasis by many
biophysical researchers on changing climate as
a causal factor for increasing fire cycles or
mean fire intervals (Table 2), there is, as of yet,
no strong evidence for continuous, directional
climatic change that could explain the magnitude and consistency of the decline in burn
area observed in several Canadian ecozones.
Under the key assumption that lightning, not
humans, caused most Canadian burn area over
the long-term (Johnson and Larsen 1990,
Bergeron et al. 2001), climate-based explanations for changing fire frequency propose that
historic burning mainly occurred during the
peak period of lightning occurrence from late
May through August (Nash and Johnson 1996).
Several researchers (Masters 1990, Johnson
and Larsen 1991, Bergeron and Archambault
1993, Le Goff et al. 2007) suggest that weather
conditions since the beginning or end of the
Little Ice Age (various years proposed by different authors; Table 2) may have reduced the
frequency of days when large fires could occur
during this summer lightning period. Support
for this hypothesis is difficult to evaluate for
western Canada because most studies did not
actually analyze climate or instrumental weather covariate datasets (e.g., Johnson et al. 1990,
Masters 1990, Johnson and Larsen 1991, Weir
et al. 2000; Table 2). For the Boreal Shield
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East ecozone, Bergeron and Archambault
(1993) correlated a climate-proxy dataset developed from a single set of tree rings to explain a fire frequency decline that occurred
about 1850, and the results from this limited
dataset were, in turn, extrapolated to several
other areas (Bergeron et al. 2001, Bergeron et
al. 2004b). Other approaches using instrumental weather records in eastern Canada unfortunately did not include large datasets across
transition times when fire frequency declined
(e.g., Lefort et al. 2003, Girardin et al. 2004,
Lauzon et al. 2007). Few of the above studies
listed in Table 2 quantified and evaluated covariates related to cultural factors (e.g., First
Nations population, number and location of
fires by ignition source, land use practices,
etc.).
More recently, a large dataset of tree-ring
width chronologies from across the country
have been evaluated to develop multi-century,
proxy-weather data, including the FWI’s mean
monthly Drought Code. Based on recent burn
area (Stocks et al. 2003), Girardin (2007) and
Girardin and Sauchyn (2008) have extrapolated these data to derive an expected annual area
burned for the past two centuries. This analysis shows that for the period 1781 to 1982, the
weather conditions favoring large burn area
was oscillatory with a mode of 26.7 yr. In order of magnitude, the three periods of predicted lowest annual area burn were 1796 to 1815,
1945 to 1969, and 1878 to 1906. Four periods
of predicted highest annual area burned were
1781 to 1795, 1837 to 1849, 1907 to 1944, and
most recently, 1970 to 1982 (Girardin 2007).
There is spatial heterogeneity in area burned
within North American ecozones within periods of years (Girardin and Sauchyn 2008), and
at a circumboreal level for the actual spatiotemporal periodicity of the cycles themselves
(Girardin et al. 2009). On the basis of correlation analysis, Girardin (2007: Table 3) shows
that for Canadian ecozones in which fire activity remains high (e.g., Taiga Plains, Taiga
Shield, Boreal Shield West; Figures 1 and 5),
the current observed burn area (1920 to 2005)
has a reasonably strong relationship (r = 0.45
to 0.87) with North American land temperature
records. However, burn area correlation to
temperature is weaker (r = –0.17 to 0.47) for
the ecozones in which fire frequency has declined (e.g., Montane Cordillera, Prairies, Boreal Shield East). This suggests that other factors are influencing burn area in these
ecozones. Similar results were obtained when
instrumental weather records were used to calculate century-long monthly precipitation and
FWI datasets for Banff National Park in the
Montane Cordillera (White 1985, Fuenekes
and Van Wagner 1995). Analysis of these data
showed that the frequency of drought varies
over time, but not in a directional manner.
Burn area was historically dominated by human sources, has consistently declined over
the decades, and has become increasingly unresponsive to weather periods favorable to fire
ignition and growth. Historically, drought
years consistently resulted in large fires; recently, they have not (White 1985, Van Wagner
et al. 2006).
Significantly, over the whole country, the
ecozones with the lowest fire frequency in the
past 50 yr (Figure 5; Stocks et al. 2003) compared to long-term fire frequency (Table 2) are
southern areas (e.g., Montane Cordillera and
the northern edge of Plains ecozones). Although some of these areas may have experienced an increase in precipitation in the last
century compared to other ecozones due to
heterogeneity in climatic fluctuations across
the northern hemisphere (Girardin et al. 2009),
they currently have the most days of any Canadian regions during which FWI conditions
are high (Figures 3 and 4; Table 1). The longterm decrease in burn areas in these ecozones
is thus likely due to other factors interacting
with climatic variation.
Alternately, the eco-cultural paradigm posits that changes in cultural practices can explain a portion of the reduced burn area. Historic First Nations’ occupation (McMillan
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1995) and use of fire has been extensively documented for virtually all Canadian ecozones
(Figure 1) including the Mixedwood Plains
near the Great Lakes (Day 1953, Loope and
Anderton 1998, Dey and Guyette 2000 ), the
Boreal Plains (Lewis 1980, Lewis and Ferguson 1988), the Prairies of west-central Canada
(Nelson and England 1971, Pyne 2007), the
Montane Cordillera (Johnson-Gottsfeld 1994,
Barrett and Arno 1999, White et al. 2001, Lepofsky and Lertzman 2008), and drier areas of
the Pacific Maritime ecozone (Turner 1999,
Beckwith 2004, Bjorkman and Vellend 2010).
Cultural fire use likely declined dramatically
beginning as early as the 1500s in eastern Canada as long-term human use patterns changed
due to disease-driven population declines, tribal movements, education programs, resettlement on reserves, and a myriad of other cultural changes that have altered First Nations’
land use practices (McMillan 1995, Turner et
al. 2003, Pyne 2007). For example, the smallpox epidemic in the 1780s in western North
America (Boyd 1999, Binnema 2001) is coincident with several studies that show an initial
decline in fire frequencies around this time
(Table 2; Van Wagner et al. 2006). Recent cultural changes including fire prevention and
suppression (Stocks et al. 2003, Cumming
2005, Martell and Sun 2008) are also likely
important contributing factors to a second and
more severe inflection in fire frequency that
occurred in mid-1900s across much of southern Canada (Table 2, Figure 5). This recent reduction in burn area is also partially due to
land use change that alters fuel abundance or
continuity (Weir et al. 2000, Krawchuk et al.
2009). For example, grazing by domestic
stock may reduce herbaceous biomass and
hence potential for burning (Heyerdahl et al.
2006). Obviously, in the Prairie and Mixedwood Plains ecozones (Figure 1), replacing
large areas of native plant communities with
agricultural crops has reduced fire potential
(Weir et al. 2000).
However, current anthropological research
and traditional knowledge rarely explain the
large decline in burning observed in several
ecozones. As critiques on the magnitude of
eco-cultural burning have noted (Vale 2002,
Barrett et al. 2005, Baker 2009), historical or
traditional ecosystem knowledge research infrequently provides detailed descriptions of
aboriginal peoples burning the large areas that
would explain early-era, high fire occurrence
across broad regions. We also observe that
many studies report people carefully burning
limited areas near travel routes, villages, or
important plant gathering areas (e.g., Lewis
and Ferguson 1988, Turner 1999, Beckwith
2004); but even if small fires were often intended, it is unclear to us how fire spread was
limited if weather favorable for high intensity
fires occurred after the burns were lit. Even
today, with application of technology and human resources, prescribed burns in northern
forests and shrublands routinely develop high
intensities that are difficult to control, and
cross control lines. Similarly, researchers (e.g.,
Johnson et al. 1998, Bridge et al. 2005) argue
that due to high fire intensities, there is insufficient evidence that modern fire suppression
programs have demonstrably reduced burn
area in several ecozones, even in southern portions of Canada. However, their research is
generally not supported by fire history data
showing fire frequency declines in the 1900s
(Table 2). In addition, they did not evaluate
the cumulative effects of modern efforts to
prevent human fire occurrence, nor the effects
of rapid initial actions to prevent small lightning fires from becoming large (Cumming
2005, Martell and Sun 2008).
Moreover, the current cultural paradigm of
small fires only does not reconcile the fire history evidence. The large area of human-ignited fires known to be associated with the settlement period in many landscapes appears to be
similar or less than the area burned in the preceding period of First Nations’ land occupation
(Table 2; White 1985, Van Wagner et al. 2006).
To explain this pattern, Weir and Johnson
(1998) and Weir et al. (2000) provide an innovative argument for an interaction between cli-
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matic and cultural ignition factors in their
study area in Saskatchewan. They conclude
that the pulse of known settlement burning that
was observed in the period 1890 to 1945 only
maintained the previous era of high burn area
that they assume was caused by lightning.
This burn area would have been expected to
decline due to a climatic change proposed to
have occurred at the same time. However,
they did not evaluate climate or instrumental
weather datasets available for these periods
and did not describe potential aboriginal burning patterns prior to settlement (Table 2). Although this type of interaction effect may have
occurred for this study area, on a national basis, a more parsimonious explanation is that
climate has, in most areas, continued to be cyclic (see Figure 2 in Girardin 2007) and has
not caused the long-term decline of fire frequency that was observed for southern wildland areas of the country. As noted above, past
widespread settlement burning simply maintained the historic pattern of burn area caused
by previous cultural and lightning-ignited fires
interacting with climatic variation (White
1985, Van Wagner et al. 2006)—although the
purpose and timing of this burning likely varied from First Nations’ use of fire. Eventually,
as the period of settlement fires ended, burn
area declined to the consistently low burn area
and resulting long fire intervals observed today
in many ecozones (Table 2, Figure 5).
To conclude this literature review, research
approaches to fire frequency using biophysical
or cultural groups of factors independently are
imperfect (Lepofsky and Lertzman 2008). As
Lertzman et al. (1998) observe,
Hypotheses about the causal mechanisms for temporal variability in fire
frequency should be generated from, or
substantiated by independent data
(e. g., long-term climate studies, or the
history of settlement, development, and
management in a region).
Recently, biophysically oriented studies
more rigorously analyze climate or instrumental weather data, but cultural variables are usually not evaluated due to the often-made assumptions that people, past or present, only infrequently ignite fires (Johnson and Larsen
1991), or that many areas of Canada were virgin landscapes with low human occupation and
few human effects on ecosystems (Bergeron et
al. 2001). However, research from archaeology, history, anthropology, and traditional
knowledge increasingly does not support these
viewpoints (McMillan 1995, Pyne 2007). Cultural studies continue to fail to appreciate that,
although humans may have favored burning
during dormant seasons outside the main summer period of drought (Lewis 1980, Barrett and
Arno 1999), their fires could persist on the
landscape and eventually grow, similar in pattern to lightning-caused fire (Pyne 2007). In
addition, there is increasing evidence that,
through carelessness, warfare, or other means,
human fires were ignited in locations and time
periods in which widespread burning did occur
(Boyd 1997, Pyne 2007). To simply summarize, both people and lightning cause fires, and
under certain combinations of biophysical conditions, any fire can burn vast areas.
Interactions between Biophysical and
Eco-Cultural Factors
Given that both biophysical and eco-cultural factors (Figure 2) contribute to the spatial
and temporal variability in past and present
Canadian fire regimes, the key question is how
do these interact? Researchers are evaluating
this question for numerous areas including the
North American boreal forest (Weir et al. 2000,
Chapin et al. 2003, Kasischke and Turetsky
2006), the Eurasian boreal forest (Drobyshev
et al. 2004, Granström and Niklasson 2008,
Farukh et al. 2009), cordilleran forests (White
1985, Carcaillet et al. 2009), and the earth’s
biosphere as a whole (Ferretti et al. 2005,
Lavorel et al. 2007, Marlon et al. 2008, Kraw-
White et al.: Integrating Biophysical and Eco-Cultural Fire in Canada
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chuk et al. 2009). In Canadian boreal forests,
Pyne (2007: 31) describes the historic interactions of these two factors as a mosaic of anthropogenic and lightning-driven fire:
Some hundreds of years ago the
boreal belt overall probably had more
fires, more spring fires, a finer texture
of burns along major routes of travel
and patches of habitation, with
splotches erupting when those fires
broke free. These fires, too, would
originate from corridors and seasons
of human occupation. What these
fires burned, lightning could not.
Probably the grand sweep showed a
mosaic of larger and smaller tiles; the
bigger pieces were far removed from
human settlement, with a fine-grained
landscape of intricate shards near
habitations.
From our review of these studies, we propose several principles that have significant
importance to the application of past and present interaction of biophysical and eco-cultural
factors to fire management in Canadian parks
and protected areas. First, as noted above, the
physics of fire growth are not dependent on the
type of ignition, but rather on the interacting
physics of weather, terrain, and fuels (Van
Wagner 1985). However, for cultural ignitions, human understanding of these interactions can influence burn area to the degree that
weather and fire behavior conditions can be
predicted. Secondly, although the frequency
of past lightning and human ignitions remains
difficult to determine (Wierzchowski et al.
2002, Barrett et al. 2005, Kay 2007), it is clear
that past peoples, for social or technological
reasons, did not systematically put out fires.
Thus, depending on weather, fuels, and topography, human or lightning ignitions could
smolder or freely burn on the landscape for
days to months (Lawson et al. 1997, Pyne
2007: 61-64, Anderson et al. 2009, Anderson
2010). This is contrary to most current North
American land use practices that successfully
suppress many fires when they are smoldering
or have low intensities (Cumming 2005, Martell and Son 2008). Moreover, Lewis and Ferguson (1988) documented First Nations’ use of
fire in areas of forest deadfall with the purposeful expectation that these fires would
smolder until dry conditions prevailed. Finally, for most of Canada, we reiterate that periods of extreme fire weather (drought and high
winds) are the primary factors causing large
burn areas (Amiro et al. 2004). However, effects of changes in the frequency of these
weather events on burn area cannot be evaluated independently of lightning frequency, cultural factors, or fire management actions that
regulate the number of small fires on the landscape that can become large (Lertzman et al.
1998).
Based upon these ideas, Figure 6 is a highly simplified conceptual pattern of a long-term
fire regime showing the interaction of cultural
and lightning ignitions and years with high fire
weather index conditions (“dry”), and moder100
Cumulative annual area burned
Fire Ecology Volume 7, Issue 1, 2011
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Historic 8 0
landscapes,
abundant 6 0
cultural 4 0
ignitions
M oderate y ear
a.
D ry y e ar
L ig h tn in g fire s
A n th ro p o g e n ic fire s
b.
20
0
Current
landscapes,
infrequent
cultural
ignitions,
and fire
suppression
d.
c.
E a rly
M id
L a te
E a rly
M id
L a te
Period of fire season
Figure 6. A conceptual model of annual cumulative burn area as an interaction between ignition source (lightning or cultural) and general fire
weather pattern (“moderate” or “dry” year) based
upon the fire regime of an eastern slope area of the
Montane Cordilleran ecozone (White 1985, Wierzchowski et al. 2002, Van Wagner et al. 2006). The
model assumes that the previous year was a “wet”
year with no area burned that would influence the
current year’s burning pattern.
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ate fire weather (“moderate”) conditions. We
assume that the previous year was “wet,” leaving no burned areas on the landscape that
would influence the current year’s fire behavior. We think that this model may have application across the southern part of Canada
where First Nation and modern human populations are highest, and where modern fire suppression efforts are most effective (Figure 5).
This model is based upon data from Banff National Park, in the Montane Cordillera ecozone;
Banff has one of Canada’s most extensive records of burn area, fire cause, and detailed
FWI calculations (White 1985, Fuenekes and
Van Wagner 1995, Rogeau et al. 2002, Van
Wagner et al. 2006). This information can be
evaluated for the periods of 1880 to 1940 when
frequent human ignitions occurred, and from
1940 to 1980 when actions to prevent cultural
ignitions and suppress fire intensified. For the
period 1890 to 1980, the frequency of dry
years with extended periods of extreme fire
weather has fluctuated, but occurred about 2
times per decade. Several years per decade
had at least some days of moderate to high fire
weather (White 1985).
Since 1880, human ignitions have caused
>60 % of the burn area in Banff (White 1985,
Wierzchowski et al. 2002). This prevalence of
human-caused fire may seem high, but it is
useful to consider that as late as the 1960s, a
decadal average of 45 % of Canada’s national
burn area was classified as human ignited
(Stocks et al. 2003). On the nearby eastern
slopes of Alberta, 71 % of the massive burn
area of 1968 was lit by people (Pyne 2007:
311). As noted above, for central Saskatchewan, Weir and Johnson (1998) and Weir et al.
2000 documented more than a 50 yr fire history period (1890 to 1945) that was dominated
by human-caused settlement burning, and this
only maintained the long-term, 25 yr fire cycle
that had occurred in the period 1795 to 1890
(Table 2). However, the area of unplanned,
human-caused burns in both central Saskatchewan and Banff declined after 1940, similar to
the national area decadal averages of only 13 %
in the 1970s, 12 % in the 1980s, and only 6 %
in the 1990s. Stocks et al. (2003) attribute this
national proportional decrease to expanded detection and monitoring in northern ecozones
where lightning fires are most common, and to
reductions in human-caused burn area through
fire prevention and aggressive initial attack.
For further comparison, the area burned by humans in Alaska also declined from 26 % of the
total in the 1960s and 1970s to 5 % in the
1990s and 2000s (Kasischke et al. 2010).
Elsewhere, for northern regions globally, documented cases in which humans likely caused
a significant proportion of the burn area include several time periods and locations in
northern Sweden (Granström and Niklasson
2008), and the Kama district of Russia for the
period 1700 to 1960 (Drobyshev et al. 2004).
For all Russian boreal forests for the period
2003 to 2005, Achard et al. (2008) describe
how climatic variation and people interacted to
increase burn area by 2.5 times in zones with
high human activity, and that only one third of
the area burned can be explained by climatic
anomalies alone. The Mongolian sub-boreal
forest and steppes may have current fire regime conditions particularly analogous to historic periods in southwestern Canada and
northwestern United States (Johnson et al.
2009). From 2001 to 2007, satellite monitoring showed over 30 % of Mongolia’s forested
lands burned. Although lightning ignitions do
occur (Johnson et al 2009), ignition by humans
causes the majority of the burn area (Farukh et
al. 2009). The potential importance of longterm cultural burning in Mongolia could be
significant. Burning over 30 % of the forest
over seven years would not be unexpected
based on analyses of long-term conditions in
several forested regions in which fire scars
from the period since circa 1800 indicate an
ongoing mean fire interval of <25 years (Valendik et al.1998, Byambasuren et al. 2010).
As the dependent variable in our conceptual model, we use the cumulative area burned
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on the landscape over fire season (Figure 6).
This is important because for almost all Canadian ecozones, vegetation burned early in the
year is unlikely to re-burn later in the year, and
forested vegetation types will sometimes not
re-burn for several years (Lavoie and Alexander 2004). Cultural fires most commonly occur during two seasonal pulses—early and late
in the fire season when vegetation is cured, ignition is easy, and fires have relatively low
rates of spread and flame lengths (Lewis and
Fergusson 1988, Boyd 1998, Kasischke and
Turetsky 2006, Pyne 2007, Farukh et al. 2009;
Figure 6a, b). During years of moderate fire
danger (Figure 6a), the early season ignitions
burn dormant vegetation on moist soils, smolder lightly, and usually go out over night as the
relative humidity rises, or in a few days as vegetation greens up (Lewis 1980). In contrast, in
dry years when soils have low moisture content or when spring rains do not occur, these
early season burns can persist (Anderson 2010)
and begin to spread (Figure 6b), possibly well
in advance of the lightning season (Granström
and Niklasson 2008, Farukh et al. 2009). Significantly, these fires would then be active during the spring foliar moisture dip when conifer
needles are highly flammable (Van Wagner
1977) and may thus burn large areas of conifer
forests. Further, in dry years, existing springseason or new cultural ignitions could continue
into the summer (Figure 6b), resulting in fires
additional to those ignited by lightning, occurring during the main period of seasonal drought
(Farukh et al. 2009). However, where cultural
fire is uncommon, or is easily contained in
moderate fire danger years, the area burned is
less but occurs during a major pulse during
summer when lightning occurs (Figure 6d).
We propose several fire regime outcomes
that could occur from this interaction of weather with cultural and lightning ignition patterns.
•Due to early- or late-season ignition during cooler and moister conditions, cultural fires tended to burn a relatively
large fraction of the landscape being
burned with low to moderate severity.
As conditions were less favorable for fire
spread, the area burned resulted from a
relatively large number of smaller fires
(Lewis and Fergusson 1988, White et al.
2005, Granström and Niklasson 2008).
This is in contrast with the recent pattern
of an increasingly exclusive regime of
large, mid-summer, intense fires in Canada and some other areas of the boreal
forest (Stocks et al. 2003, Drobyshev et
al. 2004, Bridge et al. 2005, Kasischke et
al. 2010).
•Early season cultural and lightning ignitions that are not suppressed can smolder
for sustained periods during persistently
dry conditions (Lawson et al. 1997, Otway 2007) and, combined with other ongoing human ignitions (Farukh et al.
2009), result in large areas burning in the
mid-summer fire season even in the absence of further lightning ignition (Pyne
2007: 61-63, Anderson 2010).
•Cultural fires were typically lit near human occupation areas (Drobyshev et al.
2004, Achard et al. 2008), and thus are
often burned away, not towards, high human use in mid-summer. This reduced
the risk of high intensity fires (from both
lightning and cultural causes) burning
over areas important to people during
mid-summer drought periods (Lewis and
Fergusson 1988, Granström and Niklasson 2008). This pattern of historic burning may be relevant to contemporary
landscape-level fire restoration programs.
•In most Canadian ecozones, frequent cultural burning can maintain areas of grasslands, shrublands, or open conifer forests, and inhibit the development of
dense conifer cover (e.g., Johnson-Gottesfeld 1994, Weir and Johnson 1998).
These open-fuel types are flammable under the low to moderate fire weather conditions that occur frequently in most ar-
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eas of the country (Figures 3, 4; Table 1),
particularly when herbaceous fuels are
cured in the spring or fall (Lewis and
Fergusson 1988, Stocks et al. 1989,
Johnson-Gottesfeld 1994). In contrast,
closed conifer forests are usually most
flammable during mid-summer droughts
(Johnson and Wowchuck 1993). This
positive feedback loop in which cultural
fires remove dense conifer forests and
maintain fuel types that facilitate future
fire use, even during moderate fire danger, is probably a key link between people, weather, and fire frequency (Lewis
1980, Pyne 2005: 132-134).
•The overall area burned can change dramatically through interactions between
cultural ignitions and weather. When
cultural fires are eliminated, particularly
during moderate fire danger years, burn
area can be very low (Figure 6c) because
cultural fires are not purposely ignited in
the limited areas that are flammable
(White 1985, Pyne 1995: 133). Conversely, when drought and large numbers
of cultural and lightning-ignited fires interact during dry years (Figure 6b), massive areas can burn (Achard et al. 2008,
Farukh et al. 2009).
These potential interactions of cultural and
biophysical factors allow us to reconsider further the hypothesis of ignition limitation. In
many historic landscapes, human habitation
areas and movement corridors were nearly saturated with human ignitions (Lewis 1980,
Drobyshev et al. 2004, Granström and Niklasson 2008), with small, low intensity fires predominating in these areas during the marginal
burning conditions (Pyne 1995, 2007) that occurred in most years, and particularly in the
early and late fire season (Table 1). During
drought years, these fires grew and amalgamated with lightning ignitions that predominated
in areas lightly used by humans (Bridge et al.
2005). Ultimately, with ignition relatively
common, the amount of burn area was determined by the frequency of weather periods favorable for fire growth, and the temporal pattern of fuel recovery in areas burned in periods
immediately past (e.g., a few months to a few
years prior to re-ignition). These interacting
spatial and temporal processes of ignition limitation require further research (Krawchuk et
al. 2009).
Given the large area of Canada potentially
affected by biophysical and cultural interactions on fire frequency, evidence of this burning should be apparent in global change studies. A recent analysis of sedimentary charcoal
accumulation records, climate, and human use
assembled from six continents (Marlon et al.
2008) shows that global burning gently declined from 1 AD to approximately 1750 AD,
rose sharply from 1750 to 1870, then declined
dramatically through about 1950 when reliable
sample resolution ends. The exception to this
pattern was in the northern circumpolar boreal
forest (northern latitudes >55 degrees) where
burning increased about 1750, but has remained relatively stable through the mid1900s. From this global perspective, Marlon
et al. (2008) conclude that a cooling climate
may have driven reduced burning up until
1750, but since that time, rapid changes in
global human land use practices such as expansion of agriculture, logging, urbanization,
industrialization, and fire suppression are better correlated to the observed burn area. These
effects are less apparent in the north due to low
human populations. A similar global fire frequency pattern is inferred from methane levels
observed in glacial ice cores. Ferrati et al.
(2005) concluded that a dramatic reduction in
burning since the 1500s, discernible from
methane levels specifically from North America, might be the result of disease-driven human depopulation. These studies corroborate
the spatial pattern of dendrochronology studies
reported for Canada for the period since approximately 1650 (Table 2).
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Further, the spatial and temporal variation
of burning patterns observed in similar circumboreal areas such as Mongolia and Canada described above (Johnson et al. 2009) offers interesting opportunities for further research of
interactions between biophysical and cultural
factors. Long-term quantification of variation
of fire history in these areas (e.g., Table 2 for
Canada, Byambasuren et al. 2010 for Mongolia) can be evaluated with potential causal covariates such as the instrumental weather record (e.g., Girardin et al. 2009); lightning ignition frequency (e.g., Weirzchowski et al.
2002); and First Nation, pastoralist, and settler
population levels and activity patterns (e.g.,
Fernández-Giménez 1993, Weir and Johnson
1998, Boyd 1999, Binnema 2002 ). This interdisciplinary research could provide useful explanations for why some ecozones on the two
continents historically appear to have had similar fire regimes that diverged widely in the
past two centuries, as well as for the processes
by which interacting biophysical and cultural
factors influenced this change.
FIRE RESTORATION CASE HISTORIES
IN PARKS AND PROTECTED AREAS
The above review of spatio-temporal variation in Canadian fire regimes suggests that interacting cultural and biophysical factors are
likely causing dramatic declines in fire frequency, particularly in southern areas of the
country where human ignitions have been prevented for nearly a century, and fire suppression is most aggressive. Moreover, the longterm historical patterns of burning resulting
from this interaction can help guide re-introduction of fire to protected areas where ecological restoration is contemplated. Here we
describe four case histories in which an integrated biophysical and eco-cultural approach
to fire restoration has either evolved or has
been deliberately implemented.
La Mauricie National Park
La Mauricie National Park (LMNP) is a
536 km2 area at the transition of hardwood and
eastern white pine (Pinus strobus Douglas ex
D. Don) stands of the Mixedwood Plains and
the forests of the Eastern Boreal Shield
ecozones, approximately 200 km NE of Montreal, Quebec (Figure 1). The park region has
a complex fire history and is characterized by
a mosaic of conifer, mixedwood, and deciduous forest vegetation. Eastern white pine is
found in low numbers scattered throughout the
park region with a few remaining stands along
waterways. Red oak (Quercus rubra L.) is
rare but occurs in association with maple (Acer
L.) forests and mainly on hilltops in southern
sections of the park. White pine and red oak
are both recognized to be fire-adapted and to
rely on potentially short fire cycles of <100
years (Cwyner 1977, Loope and Anderton
1998, Dey and Guyette 2000). Boreal forests
at higher elevations have moderately long fire
cycles of 100 yr to 200 yr (Bergeron et al.
2004b) within a mosaic of very long fire cycles
in the eastern hardwood forest (Talon et al.
2005). The relatively short fire cycles near
Quebec water bodies. as determined from treering studies has, at times, been an enigma to
ecologists. Bergeron (1991) suggested that
this could be due to potentially unique lightning ignition patterns near lakes. Alternatively, historians and anthropologists propose that
this may be due to human land use patterns
along river and lake travel routes (Lewis and
Ferguson 1988, Loope and Anderton 1998,
Dods 2004).
The park began prescribed burning in
1991, focusing on restoring the eastern white
pine stands that historically bordered lakes and
rivers (Quenneville and Thériault 2001, Ortuno et al. 2009) but were removed by extensive
logging in the 1800s (Domaine and Hebert
2008). The burning objective was to replicate
a historic heterogeneous fire regime with an
overall fire cycle of approximately <50 years.
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Small, low-intensity thinning fires should
maintain white pine stands that are resilient to
the periodic large, high-intensity burns that occur at a cycle of over 150 years (Cwyner 1977,
Guyette et al. 1995). Prescribed fire appears
to be successful in removing competing hardwood and conifer species, notably balsam fir
(Abies balsamea [L.] Mill.), while leaving
seeds from large, fire resistant white pine trees
to regenerate on burned substrates following
good seed years (Domaine and Hebert 2008).
Currently, the LMNP management plan requires that the park maintain at least 50 % of
the long-term burn area as calculated for the
areal extent of vegetation types stratified by
estimated historic fire cycle. Few large fires
are now occurring in the broader landscape
(Lefort et al. 2004) due to potential climate
change, reduced ignitions by humans, relatively few lightning ignitions (Morrisette and
Gauthier 2008), and detection and rapid initial
attack, resulting in a current fire cycle longer
than 300 years (Table 2, Figure 5). Managers
therefore predict that planned ignition prescribed fires will continue to be a dominant
component of their programs. The park burning program is now expanding not only to include the maintenance of a few declining red
oak stands, but also larger areas to restore the
fire regime and age class distribution. The
park cannot follow a strictly eco-cultural or
biophysical perspective in restoring fire due to
ecosystem changes that significantly affected
species abundance and dynamics in the last
two centuries, the size of the park, as well as a
lack of information on historical fire use. Anthropogenic use of fire is at times a contentious
topic in eastern forests (e.g., Clark 1995), but
it appears likely that humans did periodically
burn along travel routes or near campsites
(Guyette et al. 1995). Constrained by relatively moist conditions and adjacent hardwood
forests that were relatively fire-proof during
the summer (Loope and Anderton 1998), these
burns were usually not expansive. However,
during dry periods, fires would spread into ad-
jacent dry deciduous forests such as red oak,
and possibly from here into upland areas of
boreal forest. During serious droughts, large
areas of the boreal forest also burned from
lightning or human ignitions, and spread into
pine stands. Significantly, the severity of these
landscape-wide burns on white pine stands
would be mediated by the smaller, more frequent human-caused fires that occurred previously. Thus, the development of the management program in LMNP is moving towards
mimicking this large-area process with a longterm anthropogenic component that addresses
the need for eco-cultural fires as a priority but
ensures that larger biophysical fires also occur.
Prince Albert National Park
Prince Albert National Park (PANP) is an
area of 3461 km2 in the Boreal Plains ecozone
(Figure 1), with a vegetation of conifer forest,
transitional aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) parkland, and small prairies. The park
has a rich fire history with surprisingly frequent fire occurrence: prior to 1890, the north
and south halves of the park burned on 15 yr
and 25 yr fire cycles, respectively (Weir et al.
2000). Area burned decreased substantially in
the 1900s, and present-day fire cycles are in
the range of hundreds to thousands of years
(Table 2). Near the park’s southwestern
boundary, remnant patches of fescue prairie
exist, although these have been shrinking due
to encroaching aspen and shrubs. In contrast,
the northern half of the park is boreal mixedwood forest, with stands of jackpine (Pinus
banksiana Lamb.), balsam fir, and black spruce
(Picea mariana [Mill.] Britton, Sterns and
Poggenb) interspersed by numerous large
lakes, forming a classic northern Canadian
landscape.
The park has a long history of prescribed
fire use. As early as the 1930s, park wardens lit
fires along the southern boundary in early
spring to prevent high-intensity fires entering
the park from nearby agricultural clearing (Trot-
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tier 1985, Weir and Johnson 1998). Much of
this burning was done while park wardens patrolled on horseback along park boundary trails,
as evidenced by old park equestrian saddles inspected during the 1980s that still had sandpaper glued on the saddle-horn for the rapid lighting of matches (C. White, Parks Canada, personal observation). After a period of total fire
suppression (about 1940s to 1970s), research
during the 1960s showed that the extent of fescue prairie had declined severely in the preceding decades (Carbyn 1971). An ambitious prescribed fire research project, based upon a biophysical restoration approach, commenced in
1974 in the southwestern area of the park, apparently the first scientific application of fire
ecology within the Parks Canada Agency. After
a decade of treatments and data collection, the
final report showed that burn treatments had indeed reduced shrub and aspen forest coverage
and increased the frequency of native grasses
(Trottier 1985).
In the 1990s, park staff returned to routine
prescribed burning towards an objective of
maintaining at least 20 % of the park’s longterm fire cycle (Parks Canada 1999). Initially,
this use of prescribed fire was planned to facilitate a biophysical paradigm stressing subsequent management of lightning-ignited, highintensity fires. Burn probability modeling suggested that a strategy of linking the large lakes
with managed fuel breaks, including prescribed
burns, could be a viable strategy for containing
lightning fires within park boundaries (Parisien
et al. 2007). Setting up this network of strategic burn units is currently underway, with burns
conducted when funding and weather conditions permit. However, park staff recognized
that in boreal mixedwood stands dominated
with conifers, only a narrow range of weather
conditions exists between a controllable prescribed fire and a rapidly moving wildfire.
Thus, setting up this fuelbreak network has
proceeded cautiously and gradually.
Most recently, park fire managers have returned their focus to the southwestern portion
of the park dominated by aspen with limited
areas of fescue grassland (Frandsen 2008). In
this latest initiative, park staff burn in the
spring dormant-growth period within the habitat of a recently restored herd of plains bison
(Bison bison L.). Although not explicitly recognized, this approach follows long-term patterns of First Nations’ burning to enhance bison habitat (Hind 1971). Unlike burning in the
dense forests in the northern area of the park,
these spring season burns have lower intensities and are more easily managed. Further, in
deliberately favoring bison, a species with
long-term importance to humans, the park is
tentatively recognizing fire’s eco-cultural role.
At PANP, then, restoring fire requires an integrated approach at the edge between the grasslands and aspen forests of the Prairie ecozone
that have historical conditions strongly influenced by eco-cultural fires, and the Boreal
Plains forests that have a biophysically driven
regime of high-intensity, large-area fires, often
started by lightning.
Banff National Park
Banff National Park (BNP), Canada’s first
national park, lies at the eastern edge of the
Montane Cordillera ecozone. For over a century, the park has been a proving ground for
industrial-era fire management techniques, including removal of First Nations, fire education and prevention, fire suppression, and more
recently, restoration of fire (White 1985;
Binnema and Niemi 2001; Pyne 2004, 2007:
361-371 and 471-473). The park has a complex spatial and temporal fire regime over its
6640 km2 area on the eastern slopes of the
Rocky Mountains in Alberta. Since 1885,
lightning and lightning-caused fires are uncommon compared to adjacent areas to the east
and west (White 1985, Wierzchowski et al.
2002). Despite low lightning fire occurrence,
the spatial pattern of long-term fire cycles
ranged from <50 yr in the lower elevation
montane region to >200 yr in upper subalpine
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forests (Rogeau et al. 2004, White et al. 2005).
The overall area burned by fire in Alberta’s
eastern slope landscape (including Banff), averaged over all elevations and aspects, has dramatically changed over the past two centuries.
Fire cycles increased from <80 yr prior to the
1760s, to about 175 yr for the next 150 yr, to
over 6000 yr since the 1940s (Table 2; Van
Wagner et al. 2006).
Park staff used an ecological land classification mapping system correlated to fire regime characteristics (White et al. 2005) as a
basis to begin prescribed burning in 1983. A
biophysical approach dominated early thinking. Burn units were assigned fire cycles and
burn probabilities as a basis for a random selection process that would mimic lightning ignition (Lopoukhine and White 1985). However, managers soon recognized that the possibility of high-intensity fires escaping park boundaries required that social values and practical
considerations, not a random number simulator, should prioritize burn locations. The program then followed two directions: 1) using
mechanical thinning combined with prescribed
fire, they built containment areas to reduce fire
intensity adjacent to park infrastructure areas
and to avoid the spread of fires beyond park
boundaries; and 2) doing prescribed burns in
areas that historically had short fire cycles,
such as subalpine areas important for grizzly
bears (Ursus arctos L.), and low-elevation,
montane forests (Hamer and Herrero 1987,
White et al. 2005, Pengelly and Hamer 2006).
Again, the focus was on biophysical interactions of fire frequency with terrain and resulting vegetation patterns (Rogeau et al. 2004).
In the 1990s, public concerns over fire
risks and smoke, combined with the failure of
trembling aspen to regenerate to heights >2 m
after fire forced a re-evaluation of the program
(Pyne 2004, 2007; White and Fisher 2007). A
detailed review of the park’s long-term ecosystem states and processes concluded that a wide
range of anthropogenic changes in the ecosystem, including reduced hunting by humans,
predator control, and high human-use levels
(that displaced wary predators) had allowed
elk (Cervus elaphus L.) densities to increase
beyond long-term norms (Kay and White
1995). Fire and ongoing high elk herbivory, in
combination with prescribed fire, could actually eliminate some aspen stands (White et al.
1998). In addition, a major review of park
land use practices recommended that ecological restoration would require a wide range of
actions to manage human use to restore longterm ecosystem conditions (White and Fisher
2007). As a result, in the past decade, park
ecological restoration has taken a much stronger eco-cultural focus (White and Fisher 2007).
Researchers are working with Stoney-Nakoda
elders to document pre-park establishment
landscape use patterns (S. McGarvey, McMaster University, personal communication). First
Nations representatives routinely attend park
advisory committee meetings and are assisting
park managers in culling human-habituated
elk. Long-term patterns of human burning are
of strong interest to fire managers. The current hypothesis is that high historic fire frequency on southwest-facing slopes and valley
bottoms may be the result of First Nations’
burning to maintain bison habitat (White et al.
2002). Interestingly, similar to Prince Albert
National Park, public support for restoration of
bison and its habitat may be the critical ecocultural linkage that eventually drives a large
part of the prescribed burning program (White
et al. 2001).
In the meantime, using predominantly
spring or fall prescribed fires, BNP is maintaining at least 50 % of the long-term (1760 to
1940) fire frequency (Rogeau et al. 2004,
White and Fisher 2007). Where containment
areas are suitable, spring-ignited prescribed
fires or lightning ignitions are allowed to burn
over long time periods with minimal management action. The burn areas of previous prescribed fires, combined with mechanical thinning, have helped block the subsequent higher
intensity mid-summer fires from crossing park
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boundaries. Walker and Taylor (2004) describe a similar example from Kootenay National Park (adjacent to Banff) where prescribed fire helped contain the area burned by
lightning-ignited fires that burned later in the
fire season.
Cowichan Garry Oak Preserve and
Gulf Islands National Park Reserve
Eco-cultural relationships dominate the approach taken by researchers and managers restoring fire to Garry oak (Quercus garryana
Douglas ex Hook.) woodlands in protected areas within the Pacific Maritime ecozone such
as the Cowichan Gary Oak Preserve and Gulf
Islands National Park Reserve (Figure 2). The
eco-cultural focus occurs because of strong
recognition of First Nations’ cultural practices
in the area, the relatively infrequent occurrence
of lightning fire, the small area of parks surrounded by urbanization or occurring on islands that will not likely be burned by large
wildfires, and the numerous rare species that
may have high fire dependence (Turner 1999,
Pellet et al. 2007, Bjorkman and Vellend
2010).
In combination with biophysical studies on
fuels, weather, lightning, and charcoal accumulation patterns (Pellatt et al. 2007), researchers have focused on First Nations’ traditional knowledge of important resources such
as camas (Camassia Lindl.) and how resource
availability could be enhanced or sustained by
cultural practices such as fire use (Turner
1999, Turner et al. 2003, Beckwith 2004).
This work documents a legacy of knowledge
accumulated through hundreds of generations
of people living in and manipulating these ecosystems. However, fire restoration work in
this ecozone remains limited. In cooperation
with Hul’qumi’num First Nation, the Nature
Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC) managers of
the Cowichan Gary Oak Preserve do small
burns in plots linked to research programs at
several Canadian universities. The NCC con-
ducted three management-scale burns in 2009.
The Hul’qumi’num are routinely involved in
the restoration, including the first post-European contact harvesting of camas that were
stimulated by prescribed burning, several annual culturally focused school tours, and employment of band members by the NCC for
burn planning and monitoring. The NCC staff
provided in-kind work on First Nation lands in
exchange for restoration assistance on the nature preserve.
LESSONS LEARNED
Fire practitioners in Canadian parks and
protected areas are stewards of combined ecoculturally and biophysically driven fire regimes. Similar to earlier generations of First
Nations, today’s land managers face the same
issue in maintaining eco-culturally important
patches of relatively frequent, low-intensity
fire dependent ecosystems within a landscape
matrix of less frequent, large area, high-intensity fire. From the above case histories, it appears that managers are recognizing significant
spatial and temporal interactions on the edge
between these two general fire regimes. Moreover, managers are rediscovering First Nations’
traditional ecosystem knowledge of the human
actions that were most practical for fire use in
these northern regions where high-intensity
fires are a dominant ecological force (Lewis
and Ferguson 1988).
Management fires lit under an eco-cultural
paradigm maintain an important component of
the long-term regime while providing greater
capacity for larger, higher intensity fires to occur with few negative ecological and socioeconomic implications. Key lessons learned
to date include:
•Fire is only one process in complex ecosystems that include human effects, predator and prey relationships, competition
between species, herbivore browsing,
and numerous other interactions. Thus,
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restoring fire cannot be done in isolation.
It must be done in the context of a holistic ecosystem restoration (Pyne 2007:
472-73, White and Fisher 2007).
•Recognizing long-term human roles as
not only fire managers, but also hunters,
gatherers, and cultivators is critical in
restoration programs. However, ongoing
studies and participation of First Nations
in park management suggest that use of
traditional knowledge should be treated
as an ongoing process (Pierotti and Wildcat 2000). In some locations in Canada,
it has been several generations since native peoples lived on the land. It will
likely take active experimentation and
learning for First Nations and interdisciplinary researchers to rediscover lost cultural practices and integrate them into
modern park management programs
(Turner et al. 2003, Lepofsky and Lertzman 2008).
•As fire programs scale up to a landscape
level, managers are beginning to observe
the interactions predicted between ecocultural and biophysically driven fire regimes. For example, Parks Canada now
allows some spring-season, human-ignited fires to burn into drought periods later
in the year, with careful monitoring and
periodic containment actions. Since
1990, these multi-season burns are now
the largest single source of area burned
in national parks on the eastern slopes of
the Montane Cordillera ecozone (Brian
Low, Parks Canada, unpublished data).
Moreover, anthropogenic burns are becoming important influences on the burning patterns of subsequent mid-summer
high-intensity fires caused by lightning
(Walker and Taylor 2004).
•The diverse eco-cultural fire and biophysical interactions with ecosystem
components (e.g., eastern white pine, bison, trembling aspen, elk, grizzly bears,
and camas) that have importance to past
and current peoples link fire managers to
a broad constituency of stakeholders.
Bringing this variety of people and interests into the political decision-making
processes (Pierotti and Wildcat 2000) is
a necessary pre-requisite to successful
fire management “at the edge” between
smaller eco-cultural fires, and large,
landscape level biophysically driven
fires.
The evolving fire management direction of
linking cultural and biophysical processes in
Canadian protected areas is similar to parks
elsewhere in the world. Kakadu National Park
and the surrounding region in northern Australia has long been the international leader in this
approach. Managers there use aboriginal traditional knowledge to ignite fires in select areas
during the early and late fire season, and periodically use mid-summer high-intensity fires
within this mosaic at a landscape level (RusselSmith et al. 1997, Bowman et al. 2004). For
several decades, Kruger National Park in South
Africa prescribed broadcast burning to enhance
wildlife populations. After a period of emphasizing lightning fires only, the park has now
begun a new era of linking ecological and traditional knowledge to restore biodiversity. Researchers and managers are evaluating the heterogeneous ecological effects of point ignitions
lit in various periods of the burning season
combined with lightning (Govender 2004). In
the western United States, Yosemite National
Park uses prescribed burns in low elevation areas heavily used by humans (past and present),
and at higher elevation, stresses maintenance
of lightning-ignited fires (van Wagtendonk and
Lutz 2007). Recently, research has focused on
the long-term anthropogenic pattern of burning
in Yosemite’s low elevation areas (Gassaway
2009). Williams (2000) discusses the implications of restoring aboriginal fires to American
landscapes.
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CONCLUSION
Managers attempting to restore fire to Canada’s landscapes are constrained by patterns of
ignition, fuel, topography, weather, and potential for high-intensity fires that confronted First
Nations prior to the modern fire suppression
period. Increasingly, today’s researchers and
managers are consulting First Nations’ elders
whose ancestors have 10 millennia of fire experience in Canadian ecosystems (Parks Canada 2000). Because interests of today’s park
managers and long-term cultures may be similar (e.g., maintain biodiversity without destroying important human values), their approaches
may become increasingly similar as fire management programs evolve.
Modern Canadian land use and political
values limit human fire use within protected areas, likely to levels below historical conditions.
Large fires caused mainly by lightning and unplanned human-ignitions will continue to burn
most of the area, albeit also at reduced levels
from historic conditions. However, ecosystem
management of protected areas in Canada and
other areas of the world is gradually evolving
to recognize human’s important long-term influence on biophysical, ecological, and fire regime processes. This recognition enhances opportunities to re-engage humans in their important role in ecosystem restoration and stewardship. This process of re-engagement is essential for successfully managing processes such
as fire that require strong stakeholder understanding and political support.
... for humans, ecological and cultural edges are inextricably linked. In
both cases they provide increased social
and ecological resilience as they broaden the diversity of biological species
and cultural knowledge that can be
drawn upon for a livelihood. They allow humans to respond to expected natural cycles and inter-relationships, as
well as the ability to manipulate these
relationships for their own benefit.
Equally important, they provide the
means for people to better adjust to
those times of unexpected and unpredictable change. (Turner et al. 2003)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank many people for the discussions that helped stimulate writing this paper including
B. Beckwith, M. Etches, M. Heathcott, T. Hurd, R. Gray, C. Kay, B. Low, S. McGarvey, I. Pengelly, S. Powderface, S. Pyne, R. Quenneville, B. Stocks, M. Thériault, C. Van Wagner, D. Verhulst, R. Wakimoto, R. Walker, J. Weir, and S. Woodley. G. Darylmple, B. Hawkes, and B. Stocks
provided the base digital files for several figures. Three anonymous reviewers of initial drafts
provided excellent suggestions for improvement.
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